{"id":4480,"date":"2013-08-22T10:32:16","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T14:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/?p=4480"},"modified":"2013-08-22T10:32:16","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T14:32:16","slug":"showalter-not-ready-to-remove-jim-johnson-as-orioles-closer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/2013\/08\/22\/showalter-not-ready-to-remove-jim-johnson-as-orioles-closer\/","title":{"rendered":"Showalter not ready to remove Jim Johnson as Orioles closer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/files\/2013\/08\/20130822-102743.jpg\" alt=\"20130822-102743.jpg\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><br \/>\nOrioles manager Buck Showalter is not ready to proclaim a change at the closers spot in the bullpen.<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday the Orioles were up 4-2 and while Johnson began to stretch the Orioles never called upon him to enter the game. Instead Showalter allowed Darren O&#8217;Day, Brian Matusz and Tommy Hunter to close out the ninth.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I could have pushed it,&#8221; Showalter said. &#8220;He had been up two or three days in a row and pitched last night. He&#8217;s like second or third in appearances and I was trying real hard to stay away from him. Wei-Yin (Chen) went so deep in the game. Darren had two days off. Tommy was good for one up and in.<\/p>\n<p>The question immediately became whether or not there was a deeper issue at hand. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh, sure, you can read it,&#8221; Showalter said, via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.masnsports.com\/school_of_roch\/2013\/08\/showalter-speaks-after-4-2-win-4.html\">MASN<\/a>. &#8220;We&#8217;ve got 30-something games. We&#8217;re going to put our best foot forward every night. Jimmy&#8217;s our best option, one of them. I&#8217;m glad we&#8217;ve got more than one good option. We&#8217;ve got a lot of good options and we&#8217;ll continue to make use of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Johnson led the American League with 51 saves last season. His 39 saves this season are again tops in the league but this his other numbers tell a far different story. Johnson&#8217;s ERA is up over a run, his WHIP is up 35 points and then there are the nine blown saves &#8211; three times as many as he blew all of last year.<\/p>\n<p>How different is 2013 for Johnson? He blew three saves in a row between Aug. 9-14.<\/p>\n<p>Whether Johnson can turn things around remains to be seen. It appears Showalter is cutting him some additional slack but the Orioles are in a playoff race and can ill afford any more ninth inning disasters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Orioles manager Buck Showalter is not ready to proclaim a change at the closers spot in the bullpen. On Wednesday the Orioles were up 4-2 and while Johnson began to stretch the Orioles never called upon him to enter the game. Instead Showalter allowed Darren O&#8217;Day, Brian Matusz and Tommy Hunter to close out the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[9,447],"coauthors":[6],"class_list":["post-4480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-baltimore-orioles","tag-jim-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4480"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}